Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Even a man who has lived a life of sorrows will ask for one more day.”

— Steven Erikson

352. “Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do. Draconus.”

— Steven Erikson

353. “Corporal Clasp crawled up beside him. ‘That’s one of those Fuckeral’s, isn’t it?”

— Steven Erikson

354. “Heed the lesson there, son.” “What lesson?” “Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.” “I want to be a soldier. A hero.” “You’ll grow out of it.”

— Steven Erikson

355. “To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.”

— Steven Erikson

356. “Very well, permit me, if you will, on this night. To break your hearts once more.”

— Steven Erikson

357. “The failing was that it was so easily won, and therefore became a thing of little worth for the recipient. Could no one see the hurt she felt, each and every time she was cast aside, sorely used, battered by rejection? Did they think she welcomed such feelings, the crushing despond of seeing the paucity of her worth?”

— Steven Erikson

358. “Evading responsibility was a proclivity of the human species, it seemed.”

— Steven Erikson

359. “He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.”

— Steven Erikson

360. “Young? He’d hear his own harsh, pained laugh. Oh, no, not this lass. She’s old. She walked under a blood-red moon in the dawn of time, did this one. Her face is the face of all that cannot be fathomed, and she’s looking you in the eye, Whiskeyjack, and you’ll never know what she’s thinking.”

— Steven Erikson

361. “Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy.”

— Steven Erikson

362. “He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself – the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom.”

— Steven Erikson

363. “Secrets have power so long as they remain secrets.”

— Steven Erikson

364. “I was once told that dreams are worthy things,” said Emancipor, “even if they end up in misery and unending horror.” “Ah, and who told you that?” He shrugged. “My wife.”

— Steven Erikson

365. “People who make up their minds about something never listen to advice – especially when it’s to the contrary.”

— Steven Erikson

366. “Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.”

— Steven Erikson

367. “And somehow they would be less than human then. The game the mind must play to unleash destruction.”

— Steven Erikson

368. “Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.”

— Steven Erikson

369. “How many of us bow before a god in the desperate hope that we can somehow shape our fate? Praying to that familiar face pushes away our terror of the unknown – the unknown being the future. Who knows, maybe these Tiste Andii are the only ones among us all who see the truth, the truth being oblivion.”

— Steven Erikson

370. “Bloodflies rode her drawn gasps into her mouth, biting as she gagged and spat.”

— Steven Erikson

371. “To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty.”

— Steven Erikson

372. “I will answer in kind. No act is final. Another inevitably awaits.”

— Steven Erikson

373. “Stop talking like a sailor, Adjutant Stormy,’ Nok said. A smile amidst the red, bristling beard. ‘Ain’t no Adjutant any more, Admiral.’ Thin brows rose, and Nok said, ‘Title alone gifts the bearer with intelligence?’ Stormy nodded. ‘That it does, sir. Which is why Gesler’s a sergeant and I’m a corporal. We get stupider every year that passes.’ ‘And.”

— Steven Erikson

374. “I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.”

— Steven Erikson

375. “The air swirled into darkness around Paran. He blinked, saw the trees of the estate garden rising before him.”

— Steven Erikson

376. “Proof that the freedoms once accorded non-Letherii peoples were born of both paternalism and a self-serving posturing as a benign overseer. What is given is taken away, just like that.”

— Steven Erikson

377. “Soldiers have no imagination, meaning they’re capable of vast surprises.”

— Steven Erikson

378. “Hands were such extraordinary tools, she mused. Tools, weapons, clumsy and deft, numb and tactile. Among tribal hunters, they could speak, a flurry of gestures eloquent in silence. But they could not taste. Could not hear. Could not weep. For all that, they killed so easily.”

— Steven Erikson

379. “When those dreams in that unreachable future suddenly rise up around you, how can you not be blinded to their truths? All at once, it is here. All at once, you are living in its very midst. Why then must you seek to pull away? He.”

— Steven Erikson

380. “It seems, captain, that as her power grows, her tolerance diminishes. They are like lodestones, pushing each other away. Does power not grant immunity? Does power not strengthen the armour; does power not find assurance in itself? Can it be that those who hold the most power also know the greatest fear?”

— Steven Erikson

381. “The creature spun, tumbling, then twisted round to face its attacker, rage blazing in its skull.”

— Steven Erikson

382. “Do you truly believe suicide belongs solely to the one taking his or her own life? All that rot about selfishness and self-hatred? The lies we tell ourselves to absolve us of all blame, of all the roles that we played in that wretched death?”

— Steven Erikson

383. “They are human, after all, and it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue. So that it might be lived with, so that it might be justified.”

— Steven Erikson

384. “Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.”

— Steven Erikson

385. “It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,’ Haut replied. ‘In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.”

— Steven Erikson

386. “The rush of the river was a voice, a presence. Water flowed indifferent to the heave and plunge of the sun, the shrouded moon and the slow spin of the stars. The sound reached them in a song without words, and all effort to grasp its meaning was hopeless, for, like the water itself, one could not grasp hold of sound. The flow was ceaseless and immeasurable and just as stillness did not in fact exist, so neither did true, absolute silence.”

— Steven Erikson

387. “The end of the world is announced with a kind word.”

— Steven Erikson

388. “Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet.”

— Steven Erikson

389. “They take us at this moment, these unwavering men and women who presume to rule over us, and but point us in the direction of a weaker victim. This is their game, knowing or not, and as ever the assumption is that we’ll never turn on our masters – so long as an enemy remains within reach of our blunted, frustrated fury. And.”

— Steven Erikson

390. “You’ll not have me, Lord, because you can’t.”

— Steven Erikson

391. “Is the universe holographic? Probably. Get microscopic enough and you start seeing pixels. I don’t know about you, but that makes me laugh. Until I think about how easy it is to hack a program. Any program.”

— Steven Erikson

392. “War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.”

— Steven Erikson

393. “To love in absence is to float on ever still waters. No sudden currents, no treacherous tides, no possibility of drowning.”

— Steven Erikson

394. “A savage awareness seemed to ride the spinning sand, reaching relentlessly past the folds of their telaban, a thousand abrasive fingers clawing paths across their skin. Loose cloth and rope ends spiked upward, whipping with urgent rhythm. The roar filled the air, filled their skulls.”

— Steven Erikson

395. “Something’s nibbling my spleen!”

— Steven Erikson

396. “They didn’t shelter their own, didn’t feed their own, didn’t heal their own, and yet, in the midst of all this inhumanity, they held themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

397. “The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.”

— Steven Erikson

398. “They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?”

— Steven Erikson

399. “Oh, what a miserable man you are! If you’re wrong and he tries to bite me, I will be very upset with you, Mok. I will lay waste to your loins. I will make your eyes crossed so that everyone who looks at you and your silly mask will not be able to help but laugh. And I will think of other things, too, I assure you.”

— Steven Erikson

400. “Absence of doubt? No, nothing so egotistic as that. Nimander has plenty of doubts, so many that he’s lost his fear of them. He accepts them as easily as anything else. Is that the secret? Is that the very definition of greatness?”

— Steven Erikson